Middle East: What Can Cinema Do? presented 50 films for a viewing-packed week. Documentaries were in the majority, proving that the political and economic woes of the region have not stifled the filmmakers, but rather encouraged them to speak up. Half the films were features; ten shorts and the rest were mid-length works.

Works by these Middle Eastern film directors were complemented by a certain number of films by European and American directors, notably from Switzerland, Spain, France, the USA and Mexico. All the films presented at the event, in alphabetical order, are available below for you to discover.

September 2005. The Israelis are leaving Gaza. But how about the situation in the West Bank?

Three Palestinian towns dying of confinement and suffocation: Nablus, the rebellious, lively and loud… Hebron, the resigned, empty and silent… Qalqilya, dying… And a giraffe her eyes wide open, with an infinite look of sadness. Closing tour eyes or how to open our eyes when they are wide shut?

A forbidden journey across the border heightens the tension between Eran, an Israeli musician, an Ali, a young Palestinian. Eran's naivety and Ali's fears meet along their journey to a wedding in Jericho as nothing is sure that they will even reach their destination.

On the demarcation line, it isn't necessarily the one who breaks the law who will pay the price.

Thirty-three years ago, Omar Amiralay was an unconditional supporter of his country's modernization; his first film celebrated the completion of "the dam on the Euphrates", pride of the governing Baas party. Today, he regrets this youthful mistake.

The collapse of one dam and the publication of an official report predicting that all the dams were built while the Baas was in power will come to the same end made him go back to the site of his first film.

Mohamed Bakri is seen at the grave of his mentor Emile Habibi, a Palestinian politician and writer; he wishes to inform him of the events which have happened since he died.

Against a background of the October 2000 riots, the Palestinian Intifada, the suicide bombing and the Israeli reprisals, two events in particular suddenly upset his daily life: the Meron bombing in connection with which two of his nephews are indicted and then convicted; and the direction and showing of his film Jenin, Jenin.

Norma Marcos, French resident, was traveling from Paris to the Palestinian Territories to prepare her first feature film, Nouzha, which obtained the Grand Prix for best scriptwriter among 357 feature scripts. Upon arrival in Israel, she was put in prison at Ben Gurion Airport. Because of these incidents, she found herself stuck in her hometown of Bethlehem for seven weeks, unable to pursue her film shoot.